How to Create a Sales Pipeline on LinkedIn

Thomas Helfrich [00:00:00]:
Make sure they’re happy to be there. On social media, you got to grab some attention quickly and be clear what it is you communicate and do to them or for them, you. 

Jeffro [00:00:13]:
Welcome back to digital dominance. Today we are going to be talking about the largest professional networking platform in the world, LinkedIn. LinkedIn now has over a billion users, with over 211,000,000 of those in the US. If you sell products or services to other businesses, then you should definitely be on LinkedIn. But simply being on the platform doesn’t generate sales, and the platform can feel crowded at times. LinkedIn inboxes are often filled with unsolicited pitches. So is it really worth the hassle? My guest today loves helping people get serious about their LinkedIn sales pipeline. We’re going to talk about strategy and tactics that are working today to generate business on LinkedIn.

Jeffro [00:00:52]:
Let me tell you just a little bit about him. Thomas Helfrich is the founder of Instantlyrelevant.com, a lead generation marketing company leveraging AI to accelerate humans, not replace them. He’s also the author of the book never been promoted and the podcast host of the same name. So welcome to the show, Thomas. Glad to have you here.

Thomas Helfrich [00:01:09]:
Thanks for having me, Jeff. I appreciate being here.

Jeffro [00:01:11]:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to our conversation, and I love that you have a specific focus. With practical guidance, it’s often hard to keep track of all the advice of all the talking heads on social media because they’re telling you to do all these different things. But that’s why I want to focus today just on LinkedIn with the singular goal of creating a sales pipeline. Now, I often hear the advice to start by optimizing your profile that intuitively makes sense, but I’m curious for your take on that.

Thomas Helfrich [00:01:38]:
Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having on. I love the podcast and it’s fun. And if anyone’s, this is their first time here, I apologize, I’m a bit sassy. If you’ve been here before on his podcast, I’m probably going to be okay here. But thank you. By the way, I’m going to bubble up just a second. So we’re a marketing agency, right? And I tell you that because you made a good point, is that to build a sales pipeline, if you’re an individual solopreneur or even a small business, you’re going to need to focus on something.

Thomas Helfrich [00:02:06]:
So we focus on LinkedIn only. We have a system that we do, and I’ll explain that maybe how we use that, not from a sales standpoint to sell you on your podcast. But just explain that this is what I do every day. So this is reality. This is not based in theory. This is how I’ve built my network and how we do it. You describe getting an optimized profile. The question I always ask is to what? What are you optimizing to? Is it to get a job? Is it to find leads? But what does that mean? I challenge anyone who says I need an optimized profile.

Thomas Helfrich [00:02:36]:
First of all, I don’t think it’s your first step. It’s probably your third step. But actually it is your third step. Take this idea of altruism and you want to be in service of something, so I’ll leave that there. But to me, a lot of people start there, but it’s missing a couple of markers prior.

Jeffro [00:02:49]:
Yeah, well, I like that you distinguish between what are you optimizing for? Because a lot of people do use LinkedIn to get a job. And in that case, yes, you should be optimizing your profile for what a recruiter might be looking for. Whereas if you’re a business owner trying to position yourself as an authority or you’re looking for leads, then of course you’re going to optimize that a little bit differently. So then can you talk a little bit about the different elements that move the needle for LinkedIn or where should you start to get to that point then?

Thomas Helfrich [00:03:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. And let me just dive into that. Peel that onion a little bit. If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur and you’re trying to develop your business from LinkedIn, don’t set your profile up like you’re trying to get a job, which is your title and your company name and all the little you’re a PMP, MBA, whatever, like all the things you put in your name, those are great for searching. If you find a job and that’s what LinkedIn got, that’s what kind of its roots are. But if you’re out there trying to attract people to your profile because you want to sell them something or you have something of value to them, you would definitely want to start with I understanding what it is you do for people, why it is someone should care about clicking on it, and why they should take any call to actions. Because your profile in an altruistic, optimized method would do that. It would communicate what it is you do for me.

Thomas Helfrich [00:03:59]:
And to be able to do that, you have to start with first and foremost understanding the Persona of one, a profile of one of who it is you want to connect with and why. It’s the understanding of why. And the example I give is a lot of people go, oh, I’m searching for marketing directors in the United States of companies, 51 to 100. Huge results. Maybe I’ve narrowed it down to people I’ve posted in 30 days. But the truth is you probably should go like, not from few thousand people to go spam to go down to maybe 200. So in a month, maybe. It depends how much time you have each month.

Thomas Helfrich [00:04:28]:
Let’s say you have an hour a day to kind of do LinkedIn. Really focused, ten a day that are super focused around what you know. You know, that person’s, that Persona is plenty. You can go and comment and you can interact and message people directly. Those ten, and get to 200, like 20 days a week or 20 days a month. And if you understand that Persona of one, you don’t need a lot. You just got to know how to do the interactions with them. And that Persona of one becomes who your profile serves.

Thomas Helfrich [00:04:54]:
That becomes the altruistic recipient of your profile.

Jeffro [00:04:57]:
Yeah, and we’ve talked about this. When we are dealing with websites, you have to start with that target customer in mind so that you know who you’re writing to. And so the same thing applies here. Right? If you understand who you’re trying to serve, what they care about, then of course you can make better headlines that they’re going to connect with or identify with and want to reach out.

Thomas Helfrich [00:05:15]:
Yeah, 100%. And you bring up a great point. So there’s web and there’s email. Social media is maybe one of the three things you really kind of have to have together to get really things working. A lot of people start with one or half ass one and not another, or don’t do the other. And the thing that sits between kind of the people that you’re targeting and them checking out your profile is content and interactions and them understanding when they do check you out. Do you check out? So you mentioned websites. The website then needs to be an expansive piece of writing and talking and communicating to that audience.

Thomas Helfrich [00:05:44]:
And that could be where you can really kind of get into the weeds. Social media is more of an advertisement to get there than it is the meat and potatoes and the email, like in your marketing, your drip campaigns and things like that, that lead back typically to a website and to a blog or to some kind of value add. That’s where you can get into the weeds of what you do on social media, on LinkedIn, it’s specifically getting there quickly to say, this is what I do for you specific Persona of one. And that explains why maybe you and I should have a conversation.

Jeffro [00:06:13]:
Right. And you have to work within the limits that they give you on your website. You’ve got a lot more room to play, whereas on LinkedIn, you’ve got character limits and only so many fields you can put information in. So you got to work with that.

Thomas Helfrich [00:06:23]:
Well, people have attention limits, too, and so that’s why I think it’s also set up that way. So be conscious that if they’re on your website, the attention might be a little longer than on social media, where you’re encouraged to scroll, where you’ve landed on someone’s website. And now this is how these things kind of work together is. They’re there, entertain them, make sure they’re happy to be there. On social media, you got to grab some attention quickly and be clear what it is you communicate and do to them or for them.

Jeffro [00:06:49]:
Right. Okay, so you mentioned profile. Step three. Step one is knowing who your target customer is. What is step two that connects those?

Thomas Helfrich [00:06:56]:
Yeah, it’s relevant content. So this has to do with where a lot of people, I think, go into a very dark rabbit hole of vanity metrics. Don’t do it. Maybe tip number one, create content that’s relevant to a small audience. So if you’ve the minimal example saying you found 200 really good potential people that you think you might want to interact with on LinkedIn, well, write content that’s going to be specifically relevant to that 200, which means you’re not going to get a viral, you’re not going to get a bunch of followers. But you might get, though, is of those 200, 100 of them really liking your content, which gives you 100 good shots at maybe having a meeting with them. So write content that’s relevant it to a smaller audience so you attract them more specifically and they know exactly what you do and do for them.

Jeffro [00:07:37]:
Can you talk a little bit about the type of content that you recommend someone creates? Because saying create valuable content is good, but can you expand on that?

Thomas Helfrich [00:07:44]:
Yeah, I always say if you were thinking like you double clicked on that, that shoots into a whole metaverse universe of itself. Content to me means there’s post, text, image, video, audio. It could be an event, it could be ways you’re going to interact. And the answer to that is not clear. You’re going to need the basics. You’re going to need some posts, you’re going to need some video. But specific, maybe industries or personality types or prospects are going to require or need different types of content. And that’s part of the strategy you need to sort through.

Thomas Helfrich [00:08:13]:
How does my buyer work? So for an example, let’s say you’re in maybe a more laggard type of industry, like architectural or engineering or something like that, where they’re really meeting people through live events and they’re really more in person. Your kind of content might need to be focused around knowing that they’re going to interact in person. Where the other side might be, where you’re doing like ad campaigns and digital marketing and you’re trying to interact with people, you’re going to have to do a lot more smaller pieces of content that bring people in digitally. And so just knowing your audience, that Persona of one once again, of how they interact and why will help you determine what kind of content is going to be most likely effective with.

Jeffro [00:08:46]:
And what about the mentality, though? I mean, should you have a call to action in every post or should it just be like, here’s a tactic I use. What do you think? Because you can do quizzes and surveys, you can post strategies, you can do case studies. Do you have any thoughts on which direction to take it? Or is it just depending on your industry and kind of what you think people will like?

Thomas Helfrich [00:09:04]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think you need to experiment a little bit and I think you need a mix. I tend to try to do the hey, reshare or repost like and smash the thing on everyone. Does it influence? It might could have had the reverse effect that you’re being asking. But if you get to the end of a post and someone says, hey, if you like it, just give me a follow or give me a ring. I don’t think it hurts your chances, but your call to action should not, in my opinion, should not be in the post all the time. It should not be like, hey, let’s meet so I can sell you something. It’s just give value.

Thomas Helfrich [00:09:30]:
And if you set your profile up correctly and you’re interacting with the right people that have a problem that you’re solving, if you send them message that says, hey, I’d like to learn more with you, or here’s something that might be useful to you that gets into top of funnel. I would just wouldn’t do it on every post. I would do it maybe more in direct messages or after you’ve met.

Jeffro [00:09:46]:
So can you talk a little bit about the algorithm then? So we’re creating this content, but who sees it and how often there’s connections and there’s followers. How do you know who it’s going to be in front of.

Thomas Helfrich [00:09:56]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And that’s something that’s always changing. And I don’t claim to be the authority on the algorithm. I don’t even know if LinkedIn really knows it either. They do. I’m just. Maybe not, though. The idea behind the algorithm of who sees it is what I see is it’s always changing.

Thomas Helfrich [00:10:09]:
So I think establish that it’s going to have variability throughout a year or throughout a lifetime on LinkedIn because it is always changing. Instead of focusing on the algorithm, I’d focus on maybe the things that are always going to work, which are if you’re always talking to your audience in a way that helps them and it makes them trust you and it adds value, and they’ve stopped to look at your stuff long enough, your content, it won’t matter what the algorithm is doing, because that’s what the ultimate attempt is to get real attention and real interactions, which keeps you on the platform, which is what the algorithm is intending to do. They make the changes to make sure people aren’t gamifying. They make the changes to make sure also that they can encourage certain types of events and discourage other kinds of things. So if you’re doing that, awesome. I wouldn’t worry about the vanity metrics of it. The one that matters is are you closing deals? And if you’re not, look beyond just the nuance of vanity metrics and content of why.

Jeffro [00:10:57]:
So what about groups and business pages? Is it worth it to join a group and post stuff there? Because it does seem like a lot of groups are just full of other people trying to sell stuff and there aren’t actually any prospects in those groups.

Thomas Helfrich [00:11:09]:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So two questions are with the business page or group. So I don’t participate a whole lot in groups. I haven’t found it to be super effective for lead generation or for just maybe building a brand, building a group, our companies especially, is building community right now, so we don’t even try to build one ourselves either. I think if you have an active group and you’re adding, once again, value, you’re not pitching, you’re selling. I think it’ll help you, because if that’s an active group and you’re focused around a topic and you’re adding value to that, that only helps your personal brand. You do need a business page because one of the understanding the customer journey with you is super important. Because let’s say you’ve posted or you’ve commented on somebody’s post or something and they’re checked out your profile.

Thomas Helfrich [00:11:51]:
And though you may not list your title and stuff, usually on the right corner, it shows your company that you work. And if it doesn’t have a logo and they click it and it doesn’t go to somewhere where they can check it out, that you lose credibility of who you are and what you’re doing. So I think you need a business page. Probably can do a whole show just on LinkedIn business pages, but I would definitely have one and make it as professional as you can and keep it updated with some content.

Jeffro [00:12:12]:
Okay, so is it better to post your content on your personal profile and then have your business page repost it or other way around? Should you even bother posting content on the business page?

Thomas Helfrich [00:12:22]:
Well, this is a depends question. So if you’re a solopreneur or a very small company, you need to be using a mixture of both. I would say posting content on your personal is definitely favored because it has a much higher chance to be seen. It is pay to play on the business. However, if you’re on your business account, let’s say, and you’re doing more of a commenting strategy, which is what we recommend, is giving others attention, you should do a mix of commenting as a person on people that in the content you like, but also as a business. And one of the strategies we’ll do with some people is with bigger companies in particular, is we do lots of stuff through their business account because they have lots of sales reps that can then go reference that in conversation. And so it depends on the size of your company a bit. But bigger you are, the more content you should be putting on your company brand and then the personal people that work for you should be leveraging that in their own conversations to grow your brand.

Thomas Helfrich [00:13:09]:
So you are the brand when you’re smaller. So it’s one of the same.

Jeffro [00:13:12]:
Well, and let’s talk about outreach for a minute too, because especially if you’re small, you’re going to be doing a lot of that yourself. There are automation tools out there. Do you recommend people use that or should we just stay really focused and do a few manual outreaches to try and be more effective?

Thomas Helfrich [00:13:26]:
Yeah, to be clear, I’ve used every one of the things that are out there just to see if one can work better than the other. I don’t recommend doing automation on your account. First and foremost, your LinkedIn is going to kick you off, you’re going to get caught, and if you do, you got to start from scratch. And that doesn’t sound like fun. I also think it’s somewhat insensitive, and you can use it creatively to not look like it’s automated. But as soon as I start seeing any sequences, then I just kind of dismiss that person and brand very quickly. If I was to give you a real life kind of use case, I see customers who’ve come to us now, they’re 18 months in, twelve months in 24 months in doing automation, and they’ve seen it fall. This is a big problem for LinkedIn.

Thomas Helfrich [00:14:02]:
So think about the algorithm question you had asked. They’re doing everything they can to make it not spammy or people will leave. And so if you’re out there doing automation, you’re in that spam category, and so your account’s going to get flagged, it’s going to get downgraded, your content’s not going to share because they won’t know if you’re a robot or you’re just abusing the platform. This threatens LinkedIn as a platform to do this, so they’re cracking down on it. So don’t do it. I recommend finding a smaller audience that you know could probably buy from you and you could help and you could serve and doing more attention giving to their content or more authentic interactions, or inviting them to things that add value to their life. It is scalable. There are ways to do that with Vas or with other stuff, but I wouldn’t use the automation button.

Thomas Helfrich [00:14:42]:
And I take that. By the way, Jeffrey, from a perspective of 20 years consulting and twelve of it is intelligent automation AI system. So I don’t mean that from a don’t do it. I’m just making the shit up. I’ve seen how intelligent automation should work in big organizations and small, and I’ve implemented in huge companies, is professional consultant and it has to be human led. You just cannot let the AI just take over and just fire and forget it’s too spammy and it wrecks your brand.

Jeffro [00:15:06]:
Yeah, well, and think about how we experience it. Right? When we get those messages, we can immediately tell, oh, this is just an automated thing, I’m not going to deal with it.

Thomas Helfrich [00:15:14]:
Right.

Jeffro [00:15:14]:
You feel annoyed because it’s not a real person. Maybe you got excited at first because you saw the notification, like, oh wow, this person’s reaching out to me and they’re like, oh no, they just want to sell me something.

Thomas Helfrich [00:15:23]:
Well, I don’t want to polarize your audience. You might be like, screw this guy, use automation. It’s great. Some people find better effective than others. I will tell you, I think if you have a 10,000 person addressable market and you spam all 10,900 and 9900 and 9900 found it kind of spammy, but you got 100 leads, but you spam the rest of your market. Now what? But if you do do automation, I will give you the one that we used a long time ago that really worked well. And it was simply, ooh, tell me more about company name. So it was oh, tell me more about the company name.

Thomas Helfrich [00:15:56]:
And that was it. And it connected to like an 80% level. And I got lots of meetings from it because it was just simple and kind of like who would send that? And that was the only one I sent. So there was no follow up with it and you just kind of hit it and it was just more they ignored it or they didn’t.

Jeffro [00:16:08]:
So here’s another question. What about newsletters? I’ve seen some people start publishing newsletters. When should someone consider publishing a LinkedIn newsletter, especially looking at the solopreneurs versus maybe a bigger business and all that?

Thomas Helfrich [00:16:20]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think if you have first and foremost know what content you want to put in, you have to have a content strategy that hopefully ties to that Persona of one. But that Persona of 1 may change. So your newsletter is going to be around a little longer and so you want to make sure that that’s more thought leadership level, something that serves a bigger audience. Or if you were to take all your Persona of one list, so to speak, and if you think this more practically sales navigator, you have a bunch of saved searches. What is the common themes that you can start addressing? Your newsletter should be planned out. Meaning like, I think I can write one article a month, then you should start doing it. If you cannot sustain at least one article a month or one kind of content subject, then don’t.

Thomas Helfrich [00:16:57]:
But as soon as you can start it.

Jeffro [00:16:58]:
Is it fair to assume that more people will see the newsletter than your regular post? Because I’ve seen the emails go out for LinkedIn newsletter too.

Thomas Helfrich [00:17:05]:
Yeah. Actually, as somebody who doesn’t do crazy good metrics on posts, it’s that vanity play of man. I always think my content sucks. No, it doesn’t. We have a strategy. I have to keep reminding myself the newsletter does go out to a much wider audience and so you’re very well served to do that, I think. By the way, the other thing in newsletters that leads into good interactions are live events. So I noticed when I do a live event, it may only have 20 attendees, but the impressions are in the thousands.

Thomas Helfrich [00:17:33]:
And so you’re mixing. The content types help quite a bit, but newsletters, start them as soon as you can and just evolve it and make it interesting. And don’t sell, just educate and give value.

Jeffro [00:17:43]:
So kind of along that line we’re talking about now sending emails. Should we? There’s the strategy of staying all on LinkedIn on platform, but a lot of marketers talk about getting people into your own CRM or your own email list. Right. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, you should.

Thomas Helfrich [00:17:57]:
You should be definitely having an email approach now. Opinions vary on cold email versus warm. We could dive into how you can build a warmer list through things you do on LinkedIn first and leverage technology to get it over to email. And I think it’s important to notice. I’m not saying automation shouldn’t be used. Automation in email is way better. But when it comes to LinkedIn specifically, I don’t recommend it for dming and other things like that, just because you’re likely to get kicked off. It’s allowed on email, but you should be building an email list because you’re a guest on social media, so you can lose it at any point.

Thomas Helfrich [00:18:27]:
If you have a captive audience in email, your likelihood to sell them something, if you know how to do it correctly, is high. So you need to build the email. You need landing pages on websites. I didn’t say landing pages over websites. They’re probably more important. That’s your area. I’ll let you take that one.

Jeffro [00:18:41]:
Sure. Well, that comes after once you’ve got them into your ecosystem. But we talked about three steps now. Right. So know your audience, do relevant content, and then optimize your profile. Are there other steps that you do with your clients or that you’d recommend?

Thomas Helfrich [00:18:54]:
Yeah, so there’s about nine. We take people through. We think about these in three phases, kind of three intimate steps. What I just described there is the core phase, which is your intentional foundation building. It’s how you build relevance and credibility. Those three steps are define that Persona of one, create relevant content for them, and have a profile that’s altruistic to that Persona of one. That is kind of the high level of what you do in a core phase. There’s other nuance, but if you can get those three things generally right, you’re halfway home.

Thomas Helfrich [00:19:20]:
The next three steps are kind of we call the connect phase, and this is where you get leads. And we don’t recommend sending endless dms and sequencing. Like we said, I actually recommend you interacting with other people’s content, specifically that Persona of one content in an authentic way. Ask questions, thoughtful comments, drive focus dialogues. Those are the first two steps. Actively engage, drive a focused dialogue, and have a call to action they want to take. And make sure in that call to action that you are being authentic and real in why they’re there. Don’t bait and switch them into, hey, now that you’re here, I’m going to sell you some timeshares because I locked the door.

Thomas Helfrich [00:19:53]:
Right.

Jeffro [00:19:53]:
That makes sense. Well, we’re coming upon our time, so thank you for all of your advice. I appreciate your insights and how practical a lot of this stuff is. I feel like, guys, you can really go start applying this knowledge right now. So if you want go connect with Thomas. His links will be in the show notes. He can help you with some of this, especially if you want to go beyond those first three steps. He also has a book that you can check out called never been promoted, where you can learn about why his tie is cut off.

Jeffro [00:20:16]:
For those of you watching on YouTube, final question for you, Thomas. What’s the one thing that you want the audience to remember about LinkedIn?

Thomas Helfrich [00:20:22]:
It’s about networking and authenticity. No one’s there to buy anything. People are there to get a job or sell something. But if you can go there and just be an authentic networker, you’re using the system correctly. So just leverage it to actually build real relationships in business and the other things around it will start falling in place because people will appreciate that.

Jeffro [00:20:39]:
I like it. Makes a lot of sense. Well, thanks again for being here, Thomas. And thanks to all of you for listening. Get out there, get focused, make some progress, and I’ll see you in the next episode.